German firm Siemens is buying US software company Brightly Software for $1.575 billion to accelerate its software business.

Siemens is a leader in the infrastructure market, as well as the growing digital buildings industry. By purchasing Brightly, Siemens hopes to apply the former’s cloud capabilities, specifically in education, public infrastructure, healthcare, and manufacturing, to its own business. The acquisition will also accelerate Siemens’ SaaS ambitions, giving it a leg up on its competitors.

“This is another important step in our strategy as a focused technology company. By combining the real and digital worlds, we provide our customers with the technology required to drive their digital transformation to create the most sustainable and human-centric buildings. Today’s acquisition bolsters our growth targets, especially for digital revenue and software as a service. We are proud and excited to warmly welcome Brightly to the Siemens family,” said Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG.

Siemens sees Brightly as a way to help it tackle climate change and adapt to the growing urbanization of the planet’s population, with 7 billion people expected to live in urban areas by 2050.

“Brightly will enable us to leapfrog to the next level of performance for buildings. With seamless data exchange between our offerings, our customers can expect enhanced efficiency, lower downtimes and maintenance costs, shorter lifecycles, better data-driven decisions and more satisfied tenants,” said Matthias Rebellius, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Smart Infrastructure. “The acquisition will speed up our target of becoming a leading software company also in infrastructure and support our vision of creating fully autonomous buildings that continuously learn from and adapt to the needs of their tenants.”

The acquisition is subject to standard regulatory approval and is expected to close in 2022.